This is the first sequel to Captain W. E. Johns' science fiction series that he started with 'Kings of Space' in 1954, a book I revisited after four decades and change last November. I had every intent to return to the series to tackle the other five, only to discover that the series was only six books long in Piccolo paperback and there were four more in the original Hodder & Stoughton hardback editions that I'll need to track down. So I've delayed a bit and wrapped up some other series first. Now I'm back to this one.

And so are our intrepid heroes, of course. For anyone who wasn't on board for that first thrilling episode, that means Prof. Lucius Brane, a reclusive genius who lives in the wilds of Scotland where he's built a spaceship that runs on cosmic rays; his trusted and utterly unflappable butler, Judkins; Group Captain Timothy Clinton, known to his friends as Tiger; and Tiger's young son, Rex. While I'm not sure the series actually has a name, it's usually given Tiger's, as the standard hero type. As an obvious children's book, the focus of its target audience is naturally more on Rex. However, to the adult I've somehow become over so many years, it's Prof. Brane who deserves to give his name to the series, because, without him, it simply wouldn't exist.

In 'Kings of Space', this quartet of unlikely pioneers fly into space, visit the dark side of the Moon, hop over to Venus, then Phobos and finally Mars, in a surprisingly short page count. Each of these places is populated, but Phobos only contains corpses and Mars isn't far behind. The few Martians there are struggling against an overwhelming enemy, the mosquitos who thrive in what remains of the planet's famous canal system. In 'Return to Mars', you'll be shocked to discover, they return to Mars and tackle that problem head-on.

They can do that for a few reasons. One is that a full year has passed, in which they've built a new ship, inevitably called Spacemaster II, which is larger and features many new safety devices. Prof. Brane has also used that time to work on a way to tackle the mosquitos and, just in case you might think he's been slacking, he's even improved on his formula for caramels, which now deliver more energy. I did mention that he's why this series exists, right? Oh, and there's also a new companion, a friend and colleague of Tiger Clinton's called Toby, who's a doctor.

They set off on their eight-day journey to Mars quickly enough, given that there's a lot to cover in only a hundred and forty pages, but there's much to comment on before any of that happens.

For one, the professor hilariously submitted a paper to a scientific journal about "probable moon conditions", only for it to be returned with an editorial note stating that he was talking nonsense. Of course, he was writing it from experience, having actually been there and having encountered the dinosaurs that live on the dark side of the moon. "'You see?' said the Professor bitterly, 'Tell the truth and you become either a liar or a fool.'"

For another, there's more anti-war and anti-militaristic sentiment, again on behalf of Prof. Brane. "One of these days I'll build a fleet of spaceships and evacuate to another planet the people who in this war-madness see the end of all that is best on Earth," he explains to Rex. "I fear that Earth is heading for such a disaster as defies imagination." It's telling that Brane trusts in military men, like Tiger and Toby, who are able, disciplined and honourable, but doesn't trust the military as an entity, because it inherently follows orders and he doesn't trust those giving them.

Finally, there's a view at what people thought of our solar system before the space race, this book having followed 'Kings of Space' pretty quickly, as it was also published in 1954. Brane talks about planetoids, which are what we would call asteroids today, which populate the asteroid belt that's located between Mars and Jupiter. The latter has a crazy number of moons, of course, but crazy in this book means only eleven, because we hadn't seen most of them yet. In 2024, the International Astronomical Union recognises ninety-five moons of Jupiter, along with thousands of other small objects caught up in its orbit. No wonder Johns puts dinosaurs on the moon and people on Venus; 1954 was still the astronomical dark ages. Johns believed that Jupiter was on fire.

With all that covered, let's whisk back to Mars to see what's going on since their previous visit. It seems that there are more corpses on Phobos but fewer men on Mars. The mosquitos are clearly winning, to the degree that they only find one living Martian, who's named Vargo and isn't really a Martian, having been born on the planet Lentos. He communicates telepathically, using Rex as his medium, until such time as he learns the English language and can use his own voice. Through Vargo, we learn the history of the solar system, how a planet called Kraka exploded because of an ill-advised experiment, creating the asteroid belt, as well as bulking up Jupiter, destroying life on Mars and creating the Earth we know by melting the ice caps to fill in the craters caused by giant impacts. Like 'Kings of Space', there's a heck of a lot here in only a scant page count.

I won't talk through much of it, but I will mention that, entirely coincidentally to my review of Guy N. Smith's 'Abomination' this month, the professor's approach to destroying the mosquito plague on Mars is to spray it with a modified weedkiller. As in 'Abomination', his goal is to make the bugs grow and die, after turning carnivorous and eating each other. Which they stubbornly refuse to do and that's why there are suddenly giant flesh-eating mosquitos on Mars, along with carnivorous trees, twenty foot butterflies and hypnotic giant snakes. Oopsie.

I'll also mention that we get an explanation for why flying saucers have been buzzing around our planet Earth lately. That's because the aliens who man them believe that we're planning to make a mass evacuation, on the grounds that there's a rogue planet heading our way that will steal our atmosphere in only ninety days. That's quite the shock to Prof. Brane and the Spacemaster II crew, but naturally they realise that they have to do something about it.  Like I said, there's a lot going on in this novel! I haven't even got to a nascent love interest for Rex.

Science fiction is a genre that dates easily. Occasionally writers prove so accurate that the public sees them rather as prophets, Arthur C. Clarke's geostationary satellite communications a classic example. Johns wasn't the scientist that Clarke was but he did what he could to fashion his space yarns in a framework that might have seemed believable to audiences in 1954. Today, it's clear he got almost everything wrong, which doesn't help us buy into the wilder stuff. What he got right is the way weedkiller works—Brane's mistake was to apply something designed for one planet onto another—and, in a thrilling sequence late in the book, a response to my concerns about a welded spaceship in my previous review.

What holds up are the adventure aspects of the book, which Johns happily manifests quickly and escalates even quicker. He sustains a base level of danger and increases that danger throughout, even as he fleshes out the backdrop he's working against. I'd call it worldbuilding, because there isn't a term I'm aware of that covers the same feat of imagination on the scale of a solar system. We know far more about the history, politics and current mindset of the people who share it with us at the end of this second book in the series than we did going in. And there are eight more still to come. I'm eager to see how dense this systembuilding gets and how far it goes by the time 'The Man Who Vanished into Space' is done. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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